


In the Clear

by SylvanWitch



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: First Time, M/M, Post-OIF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 03:57:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/657797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not everything should be threat assessment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Clear

**Author's Note:**

> This fic would never have happened without the ~~bad~~ brilliant influence of the lovely and talented chemm80, who introduced me to _Generation Kill_ and its delightful fandom, squeed along with me as I watched and fell helplessly, hopelessly in love with these guys, and then hand-held and beta'd my first fic in the fandom. Any remaining mistakes are entirely my own. I'd ask you to be gentle with me, but fuck that; I say, "Get some!" Oo-rah.

Nate is surprised by a lot of things these days.

 

Loud mufflers.  Commercial jets thundering overhead on their approach to BWI.  A cyclist overtaking him as he runs on the paved path along the river.  The beams of his neighbors’ headlights when they back into their driveway at night, a quick slash of light across his living room wall that makes him think of muzzle-flash.

 

He’s been back long enough that this shit shouldn’t faze him, but it does.

 

What doesn’t throw Nate is the sight of Staff Sergeant Brad Colbert stretched out on his front stoop like he belongs there, go bag on the step next to his knee.  Nate spares a glance for the bike parked at the curb and is a little pissed at himself for missing it.  Maybe he should take it as a good sign:  Not everything should be threat assessment.

 

Then again…

 

“Staff Sergeant,” Nate says, nodding as he approaches his front door, trying to ignore Brad’s proximity, his size as he draws himself up.  Not for the first time, Nate senses the immense power in Brad’s stillness.  Nate shifts his shoulders with a show of opening the door and tries to shake off a growing sense of…something.  

 

“Sir,” Brad answers, managing insouciance even as he stands at ease, ramrod straight, posture so perfect it would make Sixta proud.  Brad’s not taking anything for granted, not giving anything up until Nate makes the first move.  

 

As if driving three thousand miles on a glorified crotch rocket isn’t a move all on its own.

 

Maybe to Brad it isn’t.

 

“Come in,” Nate says, and if his voice doesn’t betray unease it might be because he doesn’t feel any, and maybe that should surprise him too, but it doesn’t either.  Brad’s always been steadfast, the single most stalwart motherfucker Nate Fick has ever known.  There’s no risk in bringing him inside.

 

Nate’s apartment is small but neat:  galley kitchen, living room with breakfast nook-cum-work area, his laptop set up there, battered notebook, USMC mug full of ballpoints.  The couch pulls out, a concession to the number of ex-Marines and Marines on liberty he’s had sacked out there for hours or days over the months since he’d taken his leave of them.

 

A short hallway leads to a bathroom and then ends at Nate’s bedroom, California king-size bed his only real luxury, one he’d promised himself when he began trying to work off the sleep deficit that was OIF.  It hasn’t helped much yet, but Nate hasn’t abandoned all hope.

 

“You hungry?” he asks, as if Brad makes a habit of dropping by from Camp Pendleton for dinner.

 

Brad shrugs.  “I could eat, sir.”

 

“Pizza?”

 

Brad’s second shrug manages to convey indifference and solicitude all at once.  It’s “whatever you want” followed by “the fuck do I care.”

God, but Nate missed that.

 

Hoping it’s the girliest thing he feels for the rest of the night, Nate orders the pizza while grabbing a couple of beers from the fridge.  He waves Brad toward the couch with one of them, hands it over, and watches with amusement as Brad expertly removes the cap with a quarter before Nate can hand him a bottle-opener.

 

“Impresses the girls, sir,” Brad explains.  Nate’s sure it’s not the only thing that does.

 

“You’re on liberty,” Nate hazards, since Brad hasn’t actually explained his mysterious appearing act, “And I’m retired, Brad.  Stop ‘sirring’ me.”

 

“Yessir,” Brad grins around the lip of the bottle.

 

Nate takes a swallow of his own beer just to have something to do.  He’s not nervous, precisely.  He’s in his own fucking living room, for one thing.  For another, Brad fucking Colbert is sitting not three feet away looking like he’s been there forever and plans to stay awhile yet.  There’s something strangely reassuring in that.

 

Over pizza, they catch up, a term Nate had once understood to mean “shared what’s been happening.”  Since meeting Brad, however, Nate has changed the connotation in his personal lexicon.  For Brad, “catching up” consists primarily of implying without betraying any actual facts.

 

“So when do you leave for Devon?” Nate asks at last, satisfied that the Royal Marines assignment must still be a go.

 

“Couple of weeks.”

 

“And you thought you’d spend your last days of freedom with your old LT, maybe reminisce about the good times we had in Iraq before heading out to make more memories?”

 

He asks it with his Lieutenant’s voice, the one he used to use when the men needed him to seem like he was on the same page as they were, never mind that he was actually struggling to read an entirely other book, one titled, _Fifty Ways to FUBAR:  A Guide to Snafu and You (Officer’s Edition)_.

 

“Something like that.”

 

 _Well, at least we’ve cleared that up_ , Nate thinks wryly, all at once tired, though it’s not that late.  He stands up, starts to clear away the pizza and beer bottles, but Brad’s there already, taking up all the space between the coffee table and the couch.  Nate takes a step back, suddenly dizzy with the near-miss, tries to hide his discomfort behind a thin, noncommittal smile, the one he used to wear for Schwetje.

 

If Brad notices, he doesn’t let on, disappearing into the kitchen with the remains of the day.

 

Nate retrieves blankets, sheets, a pillow from the linen closet in the bathroom, and Brad helps him move the table and pull the couch out, says, “I’ve got it from here, sir.  You look beat.”

 

Once, Nate might’ve shrugged it off, but he can’t see the margin in hiding it if Brad’s going to be around for awhile.  “You need anything—.”

 

“I’ll make do, sir.”

 

“Brad,” Nate says evenly, straightening up to look him in the eyes.

 

“Nate,” Brad answers in the very same tone, but one corner of his lip is quirking up in that screw-you smile he gets, and Nate knows Brad’s fucking with him, baiting him with the “sir” shit, maybe because he likes to see Nate squirm, maybe because he likes to hear Nate say his name.

 

Whatever.  Nate’s too tired for this shit.

 

“Goodnight,” Nate says, turning toward the hallway to make use of the bathroom before Brad needs it.

 

“’night,” Brad answers softly.

 

Nate falls asleep to the sound of Brad brushing his teeth.  It’s strangely comforting in a way that Nate absolutely refuses to analyze.

 

Of course, his subconscious works it into something else, Brad choking on gas, blood pouring from the corners of his mouth, eyes wide with pain and betrayal as he clutches at his burning throat and tries to form words.

 

Nate reads, “You promised,” on bloodied, bluing lips just before he gasps himself awake, pillow drenched, hands clenched painfully in the sheets.

 

“Fuck,” he whispers to himself, easing his legs over the edge of the bed and sitting with his head hanging while the blood slows in his throat and he can at last take a breath without it shaking.  He rubs a tired hand over his face, gets up and pads barefoot out to the living room, taking in Brad’s presence only when he makes out the shadow of the other man’s body, stretched diagonally across the standard-length pull-out.

 

As he does most nights when he’s awakened by dreams, Nate sits at the table and brings the laptop out of hibernation to read the news from the BBC, watch Al Jazeera with the sound mute and the close-captioning on, and scribble notes in the margins of his typescript where it sits in a neat stack, half-finished but all accusatory.

 

He’s hung up on the first Baghdad chapter, unsure of where to start, how to contextualize it in a way that doesn’t make every single one of them look guilty of criminal negligence in failing to set anyone free of poverty, disease, hunger, thirst, depravity, dependence…

 

“Hey.”

 

Brad’s call is soft, but it startles Nate anyway, and he shifts in his chair, hoping the way he tortures the metal frame hides the way he’d jumped at Brad’s word.

 

“Did I wake you?”  Nate asks.

 

Nate can barely make out Brad’s figure in the darkened room beyond the light of the laptop, but he knows the other man has shaken his head.  It was a stupid question, but Nate’s grateful for the little lie.

 

His own face, alight in the glow of the laptop screen, must be telling too much of the truth, because Brad is suddenly up and crossing the room, moving in on Nate’s position, not exactly trapping him—Nate could probably bolt around the table long-ways and make it to the kitchen before Brad could stop him—but not offering him an easy out, either.

 

Which is paranoid as all fuck, Nate realizes just as Brad eases the other chair away from the table, pulling it around to face Nate but not put his own back to the room and, not incidentally, the only door into the apartment.

 

Nate can’t decide whether it’s better to have company in the paranoia or worse that they both feel the need to cover each other’s six even when it’s probably unnecessary.

 

“Recon Marines,” Brad reminds him like he’s read Nate’s mind.

 

Nate appreciates the inclusive plural.

 

“That your book?”

 

Nate had made passing reference to the possibility of it at his paddle party in August.

 

“How’s it going?”

 

Nate tries to make a smile reach his eyes.  It’s kind of nice that Brad sounds like he really cares to know.  It occurs to him that he’s never heard Brad ask an unnecessary question, and it eases the hard knot the nightmare tied in his chest to see Brad looking back at him, steady and patient, waiting for an answer.

 

“You didn’t learn from Rolling Stone that you should never ask a writer that question?”

 

Brad huffs out a dismissive snort.  “Didn’t have to ask _him_.”

 

 _I was there_ comes through loud and clear.  The _Duh_ addendum is a faint echo in the region of one corner of Brad’s mouth.

 

“Guess you don’t have to ask me either,” Nate hedges, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, like he’d be exposing something Brad shouldn’t see, shouldn’t know.

 

Which is ridiculous. 

 

One:  As he’s just so succinctly established, Brad was there.

 

Two:  It’s a book Nate plans to sell.  Which means anyone can read it.  Anyone includes Brad.

 

Brad’s eyes are still steady in their regard, but there’s something else in his gaze beyond ordinary interest.  As if he’s glassing an unidentified object at a hundred yards, Brad’s trying to see what more there is to Nate’s non-answer.

 

Nate lifts a shoulder in a helpless shrug, exhaustion overtaking him in a heavy wave that drags his eyes down past the blurring words on the laptop screen to the smudged keys where he’s been bleeding out his nightmares.  Or at least trying to keep them in check.

 

“It’s about Iraq.  And what that was like. It’s—.”  He gives up.  He can’t say what it’s about, not in words, spoken or…

 

“Can you write it down?”

 

That brings Nate’s eyes back up to Brad’s, and he does a little searching of his own, trying to figure Brad’s angle.  But Brad’s giving nothing away, nothing besides the interest he’s already expressed.

 

“I mean,” Brad clarifies, as if he senses how tired Nate is, the trouble he’s having making sense of his own narrative.  “Is it clear to you?  Every time I try to think back…”  Brad cuts himself off, waving a hand that’s meant to convey the breadth of his own incapacity to explain.

 

Or maybe to indicate the nature of the thing they’re trying to explain.  To themselves.  To each other.  In Nate’s case, perhaps foolishly, to a world full of people who don’t have a hope in hell of understanding, assuming they want to be bothered at all.

 

“Do you talk about it?”  And Nate didn’t mean to ask the question.  He really didn’t.  It’s a violation of about ten different subsections of the Guy Code, never mind the special rules governing Devil Dogs.

 

But Brad doesn’t seem affronted.  If anything, he looks relieved, which would be strange if it weren’t a feeling Nate shares.

 

“To whom?”

 

Nate’s not sure what’s more impressive:  Brad’s talent for packing an assload of meaning into two short words or his command of grammar, which is kind of hot.

 

“Yeah,” Nate says, managing to suggest a lot in a single syllable himself.  

 

“You going to try to sleep?” Brad asks, and it’s not as much of a non-sequitur as it might appear to anyone who’s not them.  They’ve pushed about as far as either of them is prepared to go without a little more sleep and a lot more liquor.

 

Nate nods.

 

“Good.  You look like shit, sir.”

 

It’s on the tip of Nate’s tongue to rejoin with some likewise affectionately insulting bullshit, but when he looks at Brad, really looks, he sees the lines of exhaustion, the marks of stress and sleeplessness, the tension in Brad’s jaw, the vein jumping in his throat, and he can’t bring himself to say it, even if it would be true.

 

“Goodnight.  Again,” he says instead, trying to stride toward his room like he’s confident he’ll sleep and not like he’s going to toss and turn for two hours before getting up again.

 

“’night,” Brad answers, and Nate tells himself he’s imagining a wistfulness that’s just not there.  

 

Brad Colbert is a lot of things, but wistful will never be one of them.

 

Their first full day of togetherness consists mostly of desultory conversation over half-assed meals, mindless television viewing with the occasional comment on the decline of Western civilization, and one pretty notable run that leaves Nate panting and drenched with sweat but also feeling sort of good.

 

It’s not that he’d given up on physical fitness; he runs pretty regularly, does regulation push-ups and sit-ups and sometimes even hits the gym on a friend’s guest pass.

 

It’s that Brad’s legs are approximately the same length as the LOD in Iraq.

 

Not that he’s noticed Brad’s legs.

 

They’re hard not to notice the next day, though.

 

Brad’s growing restlessness—indicated by the way he couldn’t sit still for a fifteen minute news report on an attack at the gates of the Baghdad Police Academy—inspires Nate to say, “Let’s go for a hike.”

 

Brad’s eyebrow quirks up, one corner of his lip curling—maybe disbelief that Nate wants to hike after another interrupted night’s sleep, maybe amusement at the idea of Nate choosing to climb a mountain for fun—but he accepts an old pack from Nate, helps him fill water bottles and bag up some GORP, and then listens, without comment, to Nate’s explanation of where they’re going.

 

I-66 is a pain in the ass, but eventually they’re out in the wide spread of the Shenandoah Valley, which is draped in a hand-me-down quilt, patchwork reds and oranges, browns, yellows, and greens of autumn.  Brad’s eased down into his seat, no longer watching his sector now that the traffic has thinned, and Nate can feel his own pulse slowing too.

 

They stop at the Ranger’s Station long enough to sign in and assure the NPS that they aren’t likely to get lost.  Since Nate’s got a neatly folded topo map in his hand and a compass dangling from a carabiner off of his belt loop and Brad looks like he could fight his way out of the Klondike with a six-foot length of nylon and a Girl Scout knife, the Ranger doesn’t say much, just nods at the Weather Service radio and says, “Looks like you’re in luck.  Margaret’s heading up coast instead of coming inland.”

 

Nate hadn’t paid much attention to news of the hurricane, the weather on his own coast seeming less significant than the shit the guys in Iraq were taking that morning, but he gives the Ranger an appreciative smile and promises they’ll be off the trail before dark.

 

It’s another twenty minutes to the trailhead, just a wide spot in the road, really.  A weathered brown-and-yellow sign hanging by one nail from a tree twenty paces in informs them that it’s the trail to Signal Knob.

 

“There’s a main trailhead to the east,” Nate explains, “But this one gets a lot less traffic.”

 

“Signal Knob?” Brad asks, indicating the crooked sign.

 

“It was a Confederate signal post until ’64, when the Union captured it for their own use,” Nate explains.  “Sherman marched through here, too.”

 

Brad’s little corner-mouth grin when he hears that is the Colbert equivalent of wild approval.  Then he snorts a laugh and shakes his head, shoulders his pack, and indicates that the LT should take point.

 

“Something funny?” Nate asks, though he suspects he already knows.

 

“You can take the man out of the Marines…” 

 

Yeah.  

 

When he’d hit upon the idea of the hike this morning, Nate had really just been thinking of something to do that wouldn’t involve a mob of tourists or his parents.

 

He’s not clear on what Brad had in mind for the last of his liberty, but he’s pretty sure meeting the Ficks hadn’t figured into it.  And much as Nate used to like the Inner Harbor, the bloom is off that rose—obscured sight lines, unruly crowds, water hazards…

 

There are no other cars hugging the shoulder of the gravel park road, no other sounds in George Washington National Forest but the ones you’d expect:  wind soughing in the canopy overhead, birdsong, somewhere a pissed-off chipmunk sharing his opinion with the unfeeling world.

 

“Have to hit the head,” Nate says, heading for the closest available cover.  Not that he’s worried about preserving his modesty with Brad, just that Virginia isn’t Iraq, something he has to remind himself more often than he’d expected he’d have to.

 

Of course, when he ducks behind the wide bole of a tree, he finds ample evidence of earlier visitors—wadded toilet paper melting into the moss, candy wrappers, an uncapped plastic bottle breeding brackish mosquito water.  A dented dip can, _Copenhagen_ just legible on its faded label.

 

Americans leave their mark everywhere they go, Nate guesses.

 

Brad’s waiting forty yards up the trail, patient as stone, looking for all the world like he was put there at the same time as the upthrust rock beneath his boot soles.  

 

He gives Nate a look, and Nate offers back a fraction of a nod, communicating that Nate’s happy to take the lead and keep his TL on his six.

 

It’s not that Nate’s afraid of being attacked; it’s those long legs of Brad’s.   And while watching Brad walk away from him in worn cargo pants and a faded tee stretched tight across his broad shoulders isn’t exactly a hardship, Nate would prefer not to have to hump it to keep Brad in sight.

 

Still, Nate’s no pussy himself, and he sets a steady enough pace that Brad’s even breathing is audible, though not labored, on the steeper inclines, of which there are several.

 

It should be peaceful.  That was the point of coming out to this secondary trail in the middle of an ordinary October weekday. 

 

But Nate’s tension, born of battle and apparently having dug in despite their current environment, only grows as they get higher and the trees start to thin.  

 

The hiking is familiar.  Step.  Step. Breathe in.  Step. Step.  Breath out.  Step.

 

But the lightness of the pack, the humidity, the colors, even the sound of his boots on the trail—everything says _Alien-foreign-enemy-danger_ , and Nate has to remind himself that he’s in Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, that no one will be shooting at them (if for nobody one allows a given value of drunken hunters perched in illegal tree stands, that is).  

 

There’s no reason to scan the treeline, to seek out likely spots for an ambush, to consider possible staging areas that’ll give them cover, to find places where the soil is loose enough to let them dig their graves.

 

Nate focuses on his breathing and the solid ground beneath his feet, but all at once, he finds himself shot through with electric alarm as the cover falls away to his nine, leaving him breathless, but not for the endless vista that stretches away before them.  He falters, stops, mimes watching the tossing kaleidoscope of trees a thousand feet below, but he’s really trying to recapture his calm, which is just as frayed after two-plus months of civilian life as it was surveying the night streets of Baghdad.

 

Brad stops just behind him, stands at seven o’clock and puts a hand on his shoulder as if steadying himself while he checks a bootlace.  Beneath the weight of Brad’s warm palm, Nate feels his body vibrate, as much from the heat of Brad’s touch as from residual adrenaline leaking out of him to leave him weak-kneed.

 

As if Brad knows—of _course_ he knows, he _always_ knows—he takes his time freeing a water bottle from Nate’s pack, flipping back the cap, slaking his thirst in long swallows, the tan skin of his throat working smoothly, a sight that stirs other, more pleasurable shocks in Nate.

 

Nate takes his turn on the bottle, feeling Brad’s careful regard just like his steadying hand, and then they move on, Nate adjusting to the change of cover, Brad climbing behind him with long strides, watching his six.

 

As the granite face of the mountain starts to round out and open up, cover only stunted trees and strewn boulders at shoulder-height, Nate misses—insanely, he knows this, knows it’s not normal—his M-4, the weight of it, its deadliness a promise, not that he won’t get dead but that he can deal death, give back what’s coming at him, maybe keep his men alive.

 

The trail has widened enough for Brad to fall in beside him, and they climb the last quarter-click shoulder to shoulder.  It’s good— good enough that Nate feels some of his vague anxiety leeching away into the rock under his feet with every stride.

 

He tries not to correlate Brad’s proximity with that easing up; he knows Brad’s not going to be here for long, not going to match shadows with every step Nate takes.

 

Nate stops at a grouping of box-car sized boulders and shrugs off his pack.  Brad follows suit, cocking an eyebrow in inquiry.

 

Nate indicates a vertical face a few yards away.  “Tourists usually walk around the base to the overlook, but the actual signal post was up top.”

 

Brad eyes the face wordlessly, obviously looking for a clear path. Then he asks, "You good?" not waiting for an answer before approaching the face.  

 

Nate says, “Yeah, I’m good,” and hangs back long enough to watch Brad stretch himself out and haul himself upward by the tips of his fingers, toes finding inches-wide cracks in the rock.

 

Shaking off the distraction Brad’s competence often causes him, Nate follows him up the face.

The last three hundred feet of the Signal Knob trail might as well be a metaphor for this thing they have between them.  It’s not on any map—too dangerous for the average hiker.  It’s hand-over-hand, life-or-death, and they have to leave everything behind them to focus on the hard work of surviving.

 

Brad telegraphs toe- and foot-holds for Nate, who tries hard not to appreciate the view of Brad from behind because, unlike in war, watching Brad’s six here means leaving _himself_ open to danger.  Nate marshals his focus, centers himself, feels the grit of lichen against his fingertips and absolutely does not think of sand.

 

Then Brad kicks loose a mini-avalanche of powdered rock, and Nate has to blink it out of his eyes and steady his breath until his heartbeat in his ears is just that—the constant promise that he’s alive, not the keening shriek of the shamal winds dropping a bag full of stinging shit over his head.

 

If he had the time to wait for it to pass, he would, but his fingertips are growing sore and his calf muscles are starting to shake with overuse—it’s been a long time since he’d qualified on the rock wall—and if he doesn’t keep going, he might let go.

 

“Sorry,” Brad says when they reach the top, and Nate waves it off, wiping the last of the dust-tears from the corners of his eyes.

 

The climb is worth it for the view, which Brad acknowledges with a low whistle.

 

“You can see for miles,” Nate agrees, but Brad’s already shaking his head.  That’s not what he meant.

 

 “What?”

 

“How the hell did the Confederates lose this post?  You could defend it with three guys,” Brad explains, pointing out places with good cover.  “There, there, and there.”

 

“Supply lines,” Nate hazards, considering the isolation of the place.  “Same thing that made it a good signal post made it hard to supply.”

 

“Fuckin’ H & S,” Brad concurs, wringing a laugh out of Nate.

 

“Still, they held it for three years.  You gotta give them credit,” Nate adds.

 

Brad shakes his head again, giving the knob the long stare.

 

“What?” Nate asks after a moment of quiet broken only by the rustle of leaves chased across the bare face by an errant wind.

 

“I’m not sure if that’d be the best job in the world or the worst.”

  
“How do you figure?”  

 

“Well, you’ve got great sight lines, no chance of anyone sneaking up on you.  I could glass the fuckin’ Capitol Building on a really clear day.  And it’s important work…”

 

“But no one’s going to shoot at you?” Nate guesses.

 

Brad nods.  “Right.”

 

“Screwby.”  Nate does a passing imitation of Q-Tip and is rewarded with a bark of startled laughter from Brad.

 

“Exactly.”

 

They sit down on a bare stretch of rock that’s still warm, though the sun is starting to ease its way toward the horizon.

 

“We should head back soon,” Nate observes, not making any move to get up.

 

Brad nods, tilts his head back, closes his eyes.

 

Nate considers that he’s never seen Brad so relaxed, not even with a half a case of beer and several ill-considered shots of tequila in him.  (It had been one hell of a paddle party, at least the parts Nate could remember.)

 

He catches himself wondering how close he could get to Brad before the man noticed, and as if the thought itself has tightened the air between them, Brad opens his eyes and levels them on Nate.

 

Nate smiles, feeling caught out, and then shrugs, as if to say, _Can’t blame a guy for thinking it_.

 

Of course, according to the US Marines, you can.  Unit cohesion and morale and all the by-the-book crap that had left Nate feeling frustrated and helpless in Iraq.

 

 _Virginia_ , he reminds himself, and he leans a little toward Brad, holding his breath and waiting to see what Brad’s going to do in response.

 

Maybe driving across the country was as close to meeting Nate halfway as he could manage.

 

Maybe Nate’s misread the whole thing.

 

But before Nate’s doubt can start closing his throat, making him cough to clear it, Brad is pushing up to meet Nate, pausing just a breath from his lips to say, “Yeah?”

 

Nate’s answer is inaudible but definite, his tongue closing the gap between them, tasting Brad’s lower lip, teasing and inviting.

 

Brad kisses like he does everything else, with a breathtaking competence that leaves Nate reeling, and when they break apart, he has to take a moment to orient himself, to remember that he’s nowhere near the edge and isn’t going to fall all the long way down.

 

Then he sees Brad’s face, flushed, eyes dark with a sure knowing, lips roughed from kissing like horny teenagers, and he realizes it’s too late for caution.  He’s already taken the plunge.

 

Brad, urges him onto his back on the rough stone, and Nate goes without a thought for the growing cloud cover or their exposed position or the fact that it’s already late afternoon.  Brad’s hand is on his neck, thumb brushing against his throat, lips warm and insistent, and the weight of Brad, half-draped over Nate’s hips and belly, forces a sound out of him—surrender, maybe, or release.

Brad pulls back, waits for Nate’s eyes to focus on him, and says, “This isn’t why I came here.”

 

Nate sees what Brad means, feels it as sure as he feels Brad’s hard cock against his thigh, even through the layers of their clothes.

 

But weighty things don’t belong up here, in the clear above the world, and Nate smirks instead, makes as if he’s going to slide out from under Brad’s body, and says, “Guess we’d better stop, then.”

 

“Fuck you,” Brad gruffs affectionately, and Nate’s smirk widens into a shit-eating grin. 

 

“So this _is_ why you came.”

 

Brad growls and descends again on Nate’s mouth, his free hand—the one not propping himself up—roaming down Nate’s chest and then spreading flat against Nate’s belly, where he pauses, obviously waiting for a sign.

 

As if the world itself has answered, the wind gusts suddenly and the sky darkens.  Over Brad’s head, Nate sees storm-clouds scudding in.  He feels a cold raindrop on his forehead even as Brad pulls away and starts to stand, Nate following suit.

 

They look at a world transformed.  Where there’d been below them a carpet of riotous autumn colors, there’s nothing now but an ocean of roiling fog.  The temperature is noticeably cooler, the air charged with something big and dangerous, and the wind is strong enough that even Brad seems to have to brace himself against it.

 

Without a word, Brad turns toward the wall they’d climbed earlier in the day, pauses only long enough to recall the route he’d taken up, and then drops into a push-up position and lowers his legs over the edge.  He spares a searching glance for Nate just before he disappears from the edge, and Nate gives him a grim nod.  He can make it down on his own.

 

By the time his boots hit the ground, the wind is howling, tossing debris and kicking up dust devils in the dry hollows of the rocks around them.  They pull windbreakers out of their packs as fat drops splat down, slow but promising the flood, then cover their heads with the hoods and consult the map.

 

“Back the way we came?” Brad asks, fighting to hold his side of the map steady enough for them to read it.  It’s storm-dark, the last of the sunlight blocked by black cloud cover, and they have to lean close to see the fine lines of the trail.

 

“Probably quicker to take the east trail down to the road and run back to where we parked.”

 

Brad’s answering nod is illuminated by a sudden flash of lightning, and they both duck instinctively, scan the sky as if tracing the trajectory of an incoming rocket.

 

The thunder comes next, louder than a C-17, and Nate leads the way off the mountain.  The trail, faintly marked, grows more obvious as they approach the overlook, and though it’s growing darker by the minute, they can just make it out.

 

A half-click down the mountain, where they’re finally in reasonable cover, the full fury of the storm breaks over them, unleashing a blinding torrent of rain.  Lightning strikes with the violence of rockets, splintering pines to kindling as they start to jog, heads down, eyes on their footing.  An injury now might mean death.

 

They’re diverted from the trail twice, first by a monster maple that’s fallen dead across their path and a second time by a mountain stream that’s turned raging river in the unforgiving deluge.  They find a place where heavy downed limbs have caught against two beech saplings flexible enough to bend rather than break in the flood current, and they use the jam to cross, the debris pitching like the deck of a ship in high seas beneath their boots.

 

The road is already obscured by three inches of muddy water making white-capped rapids in the potholes and over downed branches, but they make better time here, where they can count on a safer surface.

 

When they fling themselves, panting, into his car, Nate’s astonished to discover it’s only six o’clock by the dashboard digital.  The last time he’d experienced such an attenuation of time, his men had been trapped on a blocked bridge, and his TL had been saying, “There are men in the trees,” over the comms.

 

They take a minute to breathe and swipe the worst of the wetness from their faces.  In the sickly green glow of the dash lights, Brad looks otherworldly, carved out of the rain-slick granite they’d left behind on the mountain.

 

Brad catches Nate watching the rivulets beading at his hairline and smiles, and Nate meets him in a rib-bruising surge where the gear-shift burrows into his side.  It’s worth the pain for the taste of rain on Brad’s lips and the desperate sound Brad makes against Nate’s mouth.

 

“Find us a bed,” Brad orders, and it’s Nate’s turn to say, “Yessir.”

 

Easier said than done, as it turns out.  The road they came in on is already gone, turned into an extension of Sherman’s Creek, and though Nate has perfect confidence in his off-road driving skills, he can’t say the same about his car.

 

They turn around, avoiding dirt roads when they can, and eventually find their way to a two-lane that might qualify as an actual highway, if the lines down the middle weren’t totally obscured by the driving rain.

 

Beside him, Brad’s navigating with a Rand atlas that Nate always keeps in his back seat.  

 

“Left,” Brad offers when they come to a road slightly wider than the first. 

 

Then, “Here,” which eventually leads them to Luray, the sort of middling, rural Virginia town where the strip malls are outnumbered by the churches and the bars outnumber both.

 

The motel isn’t fancy, but it is expensive.  When Nate asks the guy at the counter to repeat the cost of a double, the guy points wordlessly at a sign over the desk: “Hunters Welcome.”

 

Ah.  Price-gouging at its finest.

 

Still, despite the cost, neither suggests getting a single.  For one thing, central Virginia isn’t exactly one gay pride parade away from Fire Island.  For another, Brad’s still a Marine.

 

They can always use the second bed to spread out their wet gear on towels.

The towels prove thin, the room damp and cold, but the wall unit for once seems equal to the task of pumping out warm, dry air when they turn it on, and the bed is big enough for the both of them.  

 

Given their ample experience sleeping on the ground, neither of them is likely to complain even if either were the bitching type.

 

There’s a long moment of growing tension after the packs are emptied of their soaked gear, such as it is, only the gentle roar of the heater and the louder percussion of rain on the roof breaking the silence between them.

 

Then Nate’s stomach growls, and they both laugh, and they say, “Dinner?” at the same time, and they’re wet again, opting to walk the two blocks to Chan’s Chinese-American Takeout, the menu for which they’d found in the nightstand drawer.

 

As chance or fate would have it, there’s a liquor store two doors down, where they buy some good beer while waiting for their food.

 

By the time they’re ready to head back, the rain has slowed to a patter and the North Star is peaking out from behind a thin scrim of racing clouds.

 

“They have low standards,” Brad notes when he’s inhaled half of his Kung Pao Chicken.   Nate nods and laughs around a mouthful of Moo Goo Gai Pan.  If Chan’s is the best, he’d hate to try the worst.  Still, it’s carbs and protein, and the beer is good and cold, and by the time they’re done, their clothes are only tacky instead of plastered to their skin.

 

“Shower?” Brad asks when it’s apparent they’ve moved on to the dessert course.  But there’s an uncertainty in the question that Nate would call endearing if he didn’t know Brad the way that he does.  This isn’t Brad unsure of himself.

 

This is Brad unsure of Nate.  Or rather, of Nate’s experience, his comfort zone, what he will and won’t do.

 

Nate stands and takes the two steps around the ubiquitous wood-veneer motel table, and Brad swivels in his seat to meet him so that Nate has no trouble sliding between Brad’s spread thighs.

 

He puts his hands on Brad’s powerful shoulders, and Brad looks up at him, expression maddeningly, deliberately neutral.  

 

“There’s nothing you can offer that I’ll say no to, Brad.  I’m what you Marines call a ‘sure thing’ when you’re being polite about it.”

 

“We,” Brad corrects automatically.

 

“We,” Nate agrees as Brad surges up out of his seat to wrap both of his arms around the small of Nate’s back and pull him in fast enough, hard enough to drive the breath out of his mouth and into Brad’s, which opens to take whatever Nate is offering.

 

It’s a surrender and an assault, and Nate’s body gets behind it so fast it leaves his brain hung up somewhere because the next lucid thought he has is how cold the tile floor of the bathroom is under his bare feet.

The room is painted Virgin Mary blue.  The light over the vanity casts a yellow-orange glow over their features, and the fan rattles asthmatically overhead, but that doesn’t matter because Brad Colbert is naked, water streaming down his chest and arrowing toward his half-hard cock, and he’s holding a hand out to Nate in what should be a sappy gesture but comes off as chivalrous, and Nate Fick doesn’t swoon because he’s a Dartmouth graduate and a fucking Recon Marine, but it’s a near thing.

 

Because hot water and Brad’s smooth, wet skin, and the brush of his cock against Nate’s belly and the feel of Brad’s hands skimming water from the small of Nate’s back and over his ass?

 

Swoon-worthy.  Every single sensation.

 

In theory, they’re supposed to be washing away the detritus of the day and warming up.  In fact, they’re managing only one of those two things efficiently.  The shower’s really too small for two full-grown Marines, so actually washing is a challenge they give up after some awkward jockeying that makes them laugh.

  
But heat doesn’t seem to be an issue, since they spend most of their time touching from lips to toes, Nate’s cock pressed against Brad’s thigh, which is snugged between his parted legs and applying just the right degree of pressure to cause Nate to lose focus on everything but that feeling.

 

At last, breathless and steamed up in more ways than one, they work their way out of the shower, where Brad drops to his knees, head bowed, to work the rough, thin towel over Nate’s legs and ghost heated breaths across his straining cock.

 

Nate moans at the sight of Brad taking up all the tiny space on the floor of the bathroom, a moan that turns to a choked off shout when Brad makes good on his teasing and takes Nate’s cock into his mouth, wrapping an arm around the back of Nate’s thighs to hold him upright and in place.

 

All Nate can do is cup the back of Brad’s head and try not to thrust, and for Brad’s part, it’s easy and casual—Brad’s not taking Nate anywhere near the edge.

 

The filthy sounds of Brad sucking him off force Nate to make sniper calculations—distance to target, wind speed and direction, angle—to keep from coming too soon, and when he strokes the back of Brad’s neck in warning, Brad slides off with a lewd pop and looks up into Nate’s face, a smile of sharp satisfaction on his face at what he must see in Nate’s—need and want and other things, things too large for this tiny room.

 

When Brad stands up, Nate is struck again, like he was two days ago on his doorstep, by just how big Brad is, how much space he occupies with his size and his presence.  A thrill of uneasy pleasure bolts through him at the thought of this man holding him down, and it’s all Nate can do not to beg.

 

Minutes later, on his back beneath Brad, Brad’s expert lips sucking blood to the surface to the thin skin where his neck joins his shoulder, drawing waves of desperate need through his cock at every pull, Nate does beg, says, “Fuck, Brad.” And “God, Brad, God!” and “Fuck me, Jesus Brad, just do it.”

 

Brad levers himself up, arms bracketing Nate’s head, eyes fierce with possession.  

 

“That an order, sir?”

 

In answer, Nate wraps a hand around Brad’s cock and watches as Brad’s eyelids flutter.  He feels a shudder wrack Brad’s body and roughens his grip, speeding up the stroke, and Brad drops his head to the hollow of Nate’s collarbone and worries at the skin there, breath gusting out of him in a fluent stream of blasphemy.

 

“You keep it up, this show’ll be over before it begins,” Brad warns at last in a broken, low growl, and it’s Nate’s turn to shudder.

 

“Nate,” Nate supplies, removing his hand long enough to reach for the condom and lube that had magically appeared from Brad’s loaner pack before they’d finished their dinner.

 

“Nate,” Brad echoes, dipping his hips to slide his cock in the sweat-slick crease between Nate’s thigh and pelvis.  

 

“Fuck!”  It’s too much.  All at once, Nate’s sure he’s not going to make it, sure he’s going to fly apart, and he shies away then from the images his brain supplies, images that make him hold his breath and go still, eyes tight shut.

 

Over him, Brad shifts and slides back so that he’s parting Nate’s thighs, raising his knees, tracing a lube-wet line down his cock, over his balls, circling the entrance and then dipping inward with a slow and steady pressure that breaks Nate’s control.

 

Where before he’d been begging, now he’s reduced to incoherent noises that grow louder as Brad explores, adds digits, curls them upward, seeking with the patient, relentless focus of a sniper and the stamina of a Recon Marine the place that will light Nate up.

 

By the time Brad’s cock nudges inside of him, Nate’s shaking, abdomen muscles aching with tension, jaw clenched against yet more embarrassing sounds.

 

“C’mon,” Brad urges, sliding home, giving Nate only a moment to suck in a desperate breath before pulling back and reseating, deeper, harder, the power of it moving Nate up the bed so that he has to slap his hands against the headboard to spare his skull.  

 

Grasping Nate’s thighs in a bruising grip, Brad surges to his knees and pulls Nate closer, so that with every rock of Brad’s hips, his cock is brushing against that place inside Nate that rips every last pretension from him.  

 

Nate throws his head back, eyes tight-closed, mouth wide open, and he’s close—so close, blood thundering in his ears, electric pleasure gathering low in his belly—when Brad says his name, says, “Come on, Nate, fucking come with me,” and then he’s gone, a throat-tearing scream wrenched from him as he’s obliterated, ripped atom from atom in a total annihilation of time and meaning.

 

He comes back to himself with Brad’s cock still twitching through the aftershocks inside of him, and it’s too much, too much, all of it, Brad’s noisy breathing, the slickness on his belly, every individual fingertip leaving marks on the backs of his thighs.

 

“Brad,” he croaks, opening his eyes with a herculean effort.  He’s not sure what he was planning to say—maybe something about getting cleaned up or maybe a joke to ease the terrible, perfect pressure of fullness that’s taken up residence behind his ribs, but when Nate sees Brad looking back at him, eyes alight with heat of a different kind, not only the satisfaction of the sated but a deep and abiding understanding, all he can say—the only words that make any sense—are, “I love you.”

 

Brad slips from Nate’s body, his hands ease away from Nate’s thighs, and then Brad is once again a solid weight holding him down.  He’s right there—right there, breath mingling, beads of sweat visible over his lip, at his hairline—when he says, “I love you, Nate.”

 

And it’s a pledge and a promise and a contract Nate would never have asked for, never expected, and there’s a shitload of details to clear up and logistics to consider, but before his brain takes him out of this bed and into the uncertain future—college and career, Great Britain and Iraq—Nate remembers:  _Virginia_.

 

In what may be the girliest thing he’s ever done—in a move that Brad will most definitely pretend later has never happened—Nate takes a moment to observe and admire, trailing the lightest of touches over Brad’s cheekbones, down his aquiline nose, across his parted lips and to the cleft of his chin, and then they kiss once more, a chaste, warm, lingering kiss

 

And then, because the evidence of their mutual pleasure is pressed between them in a mess that will most definitely require a second—and more productive—shower, Brad pushes himself up and over to one side, taking a moment of his own for open admiration of Nate’s sweaty, flushed face and kiss-swollen lips.

 

As he watches Brad cross toward the bathroom, Nate is struck with an incongruous thought, as clear as if he’s been set afire by sudden lightning, and he knows where the Baghdad chapter has to go, sees all the rest of the story like a map of the AO, and he’s tempted to scribble hasty notes on the motel’s tiny telephone pad when he’s interrupted by Brad’s reappearance in the bathroom door.

 

“Coming?” he asks softly, nothing more, just that one word.

 

Nate answers with action, crossing the space between them, naked and exposed and for the first time in a long, long while completely in the clear.


End file.
